The Perfect Consort
by Melospiza
Summary: Mai attempts to extract herself from a sticky situation. [ZukoxMai]


**The Perfect Consort**

By Melospiza

**A/N:** This was written for lj user"rawles" , pretty much at random. She asked me to write Zuko/Mai, and the prompt she gave me was "apology." lj user"squarewhore" is my Mai-muse and helped me out with this here and there, but otherwise was just my personal cheerleader while I wrote it myself. Everything else is my fault. :D

**WARNING:** Features some mild but possibly squicky details about sex (though no description of the act itself). If you are unaware of the fact that sex is messy and involves fluids, or you just don't want to read that sort of thing, I suggest you pass this fic by.

**Disclaimer:**_Avatar: The Last Airbender_ and all associated characters are the property of Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko and Nickelodeon studios. I am making no profit off this bit of fanfiction, I just borrowed the characters for a little dirty fun.

In the dead of night, in the wash of moonlight filtering through the cracked timbers of the ancient barn in which she was lying, Mai was feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

She thought she should have been elated. And honestly, for a few minutes, she had been. It was the third liaison she and Zuko had shared in as many nights, but this time he had not made any attempt to preemptively chase her off. He hadn't settled himself somewhere to watch her, wary and brooding, until she had finally tired of his mood enough to leave. This time he had managed to relax enough, and to trust her enough, to actually fall asleep afterward. So now she lay on her back on the floor in a barn so decrepit it could barely be considered a barn, pinned to the rough ostrich-horse blanket by the warm weight of the man she had loved since before she knew what love was, his breaths deep and even in her ear.

It was true that this was not how she imagined it would be. In the winter just a few months shy of the year he had been banished, when their betrothal seemed inevitable, her mother had slipped her a small picture-book which was intended to prepare her for what would happen next. And when Mai had lain in bed, blushing so hard over the erotic woodcuts that she fainted once or twice, the vision of her lover had never been this: certainly not scarred by his father and consequently so very bitter, but also not short-haired, shabbily dressed, and smelling of ostrich-horse. Still, love is love, and even if it hadn't been romantic, it had at least been both heartwarming and rather satisfying.

That is, until she realized just how very, very sticky she was. Not just at the apex of her thighs, but all along their insides, and the sweat which had drenched them both during their exertions had dried into a gritty crust. At the same time, Mai could feel that some of the detritus from the dirt floor seemed to have transferred to the backs of her legs where they had sprawled out past the edges of the blanket. She could recall with stunning clarity each path Zuko's tongue had taken over her skin, and while it had been immensely erotic at the time, at that moment it just seemed revolting. Her flesh was crawling.

Not to mention her leg was starting to fall asleep from the pressure of his pelvis upon it.

No amount of intoxicating bodily warmth or breathing or heartbeat pounding against her chest on Zuko's part was going to make her feel any better at this particular moment. If she didn't get to wash up, and soon, she was going to go out of her mind.

Mai stretched her arms outward, splaying her fingers on the blanket and the compacted dirt floor, pressing down with her palms and her heels. Gradually she began to try to shift herself out from beneath Zuko without disturbing him. But when she inched to the left, he inched right along with her. Thwarted, Mai pressed her hand against his side and tried to push him off that way, but he outweighed her by twenty or thirty pounds at least, and the effort required to heave him to one side would surely wake him up.

Not that his waking up was the bad part. It was having to explain that she had woken him up not merely to escape the press of his _royal person_, but also to wash away the _imperial emissions_ he had so chosen to grace her with. Yes, he was a prince in exile, but he was still a prince, she had still been trained in certain protocols, and he was well within his rights to try to execute her if she displeased or offended him. He might not necessarily succeed, but a fight to the death or near-death would certainly put a cramp in their relationship.

Of course, if he woke up for some unrelated reason and moved, she could hardly be faulted for using it as an opportunity to get away from him.

Mai considered for a moment.

Then she screamed.

In a stunning display of operant conditioning, Zuko flopped onto his back and was halfway onto his feet, ready to fight, before even bothering to ask in a nearly indecipherable slur what had happened.

Showing unshakable restraint, Mai did not allow her facial expression to reveal any the joy or relief of being free of him and feeling sensation begin to return to her leg. Instead she gave him a mild look and murmured, "There was a spider."

Zuko blinked blearily. "S'poisonous?"

Mai said, "No, I don't think so. But it almost crawled on me."

Zuko gave the blanket and the area immediately around it a cursory look before sinking back down onto his stomach, muttering about spiders always being in barns and women being crazy. Now capable of sitting up beside him, Mai pet his shoulders soothingly until his grumbling subsided and his breathing began to slow again. Then, crawling a polite distance from the edge of the blanket, she bolted for the nearest intact trough.

Unfortunately that was the one the ostrich-horse itself was tied up next to, and Mai had to shoulder the great stinking thing aside to get to the water. As she pushed at it, it started to make a disgruntled croaking sound.

"Hush!" Mai spat. "If you wake him up, I will _gut you_."

The huge bird seemed to catch her meaning and shuffled out of the way.

Mai started to splash some of the water up onto her arms, grateful that she had actually seen Zuko fill the trough for the ostrich-horse with stream water so she didn't have to worry too much about how clean it was. Seconds later, as she was wiping her damp hands across her face, she felt something warm and viscous slide _out_ of her and start to trickle down her thigh.

Pressing her lips together to muffle her horrified whimper, Mai looked around frantically and snatched up a piece of dark fabric from the floor nearby. She dunked it into the water and began to scrub vigorously at her offended (and slightly bruised) flesh, cleansing herself from hips to ankles, then hips to breasts, before realizing what she had in her hands was a shirt.

Zuko's shirt. His _only_ shirt, judging from the size of the piddly little backpack he carried around with him.

Mai flung it away from herself. It landed in the water with a splash. She swung her head around to make sure the sound hadn't woken him up again, then dragged the shirt out, twisted and wrung it between both hands, and draped it over the edge of the trough. The bottom of it pooled on the ground, most likely causing the dirt that touched it to instantly turn to mud. But there was no helping it. The barn was an empty structure, with no proper stalls, no loft, no pegs in the shattered walls; there was nowhere else to hang it.

Stepping away from the trough, Mai began to pace in a tight circle, pressing her palms together as she thought, the night air cooling her damp skin. Even if she could hang the shirt someplace where it would be clean, it was unlikely to be dry by morning. Or, considering the lateness of the hour, even by that afternoon. Zuko would have to ride off on his ostrich-horse shirtless, like some rogue bandit. And as appealing an image as that was, Mai knew he wouldn't be happy with that. But there was nothing she could do about it.

Clearly she couldn't be here when he woke up.

Mai tiptoed around the barn, picking up clothes and darts and knives and crossbow bolts from where they had been scattered, trying to redress and re-arm herself as quietly as possible. Zuko remained asleep, blissfully unaware, and more than once she was compelled to gaze down at him simply because he was so very handsome.

Shaking dirt from her clothes and smoothing out a few wrinkles, Mai walked over to stand in front of the partly-opened barn door, then paused to look back at him again. It seemed a shame to sneak out like this, as the evening had been rather nice up until when Zuko had fallen asleep. She looked around slowly at the generously cracked walls, the dozing ostrich-horse, the shabby pile of supplies, and the lone figure sprawled in the stripes of silvery light and shadow cast by the moonglow glimmering through the walls.

Mai decided she was going to leave him a note.

Crossing the room, she knelt to write it just shy of where one of his hands lay against the floor, sure that he would see it shortly after he awoke. She slipped a small throwing-dagger from her sleeve and used it to carve into the dirt floor.

_Last night was lovely_, she wrote. Then she glanced at him, and the corners of her mouth quirked downward as she noticed more stripes running perpendicular to the stripes caused by the shadow of the barn's timbers, long lines of welts crossing his skin from where she had enthusiastically clawed at him. Bowing over the first neat line of script on the floor, she added a second.

_We have to do it again sometime when I am prepared to leave fewer marks._

Pausing, she added, _I apologize for misusing your shirt_.

Tucking the blade back into the concealment of her sleeve, Mai gave Zuko one last fond look before she stood and paced silently toward the barn's entrance. Her slender frame slid easily between the heavy doors, and then she was running into the darkness, vanishing into the trees like smoke.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to where she had left the tank and her other two companions that she realized Zuko probably could have used firebending to dry the shirt in two seconds flat.


End file.
